343: [RANT] Why Your Workouts Aren’t Building The Muscle You Want

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 343.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and it has been a hot second since I have done a RANT episode, and I know that many of you love my rant episodes because, in my mind, a rant episode is one where I can speak a little freer, a little just more like off the cuff, tell you what I think, don't have to worry about people's feelings, and just kind of say it the way that I see it. And so I've done some fun rant episodes in the past. You can go back into the archives and check some of those out, but it's been a little bit of a time since I have done one of these, and I know that they're many of your favorites, so I thought it was high time that we did another rant episode. And today's topic is a doozy because it is a mistake that I see so frequently with so many women. And the reason that I'm so passionate about this topic, and I usually get passionate with rants because I pick topics that I really care about.  

Busy women need workout efficiency 01:50 

The reason that I'm so passionate about this topic is because the population of women that I coach, the followers on my Instagram, people listening to the podcast, are not usually the people who have all of the time in the world. Like most of y'all don't have the luxury of wasting time. You're a busy mom, you are a busy grandma, you have a job, you have responsibilities, you have a workout plan. I mean your life is, for most of you, is very, very full. And I don't talk to many people who feel like they are just trying to fill their day, right? Like they don't know what they're going to do all day, and they just kind of twiddle their thumbs and like try to find something to do. There are people out there that have that problem. I doubt that you are one of them. And so this is why I'm so passionate about this topic, because if you have the luxury of time, you can waste time. And it doesn't really matter. You can just kind of ho-hum your day. You don't really have to be efficient.  

But if you do not have time, if you're a busy woman, you need to be very efficient in what you do. And you need to make sure that when you're investing time into something, that it is actually giving you an ROI, right? A return on your investment. That's an investing term. You want, when you invest money into something, you want to get more money back. You want to get a return on that investment. And it's the same thing with our time. Like when we invest time into something, time is our most precious commodity, right? You can generate more money. You cannot generate more time. So time is one of our most precious commodities. And I don't know about you, but if I invest time into something, I want it to be worthwhile. I want to get a return on that investment. And the topic that I'm talking about today is one where so many women I see waste so much time. And we're going to talk about it.

Exercise benefits overall health 03:48 

Most people listening to this podcast are not going to be shocked when I say working out is a good thing. Like it's something that we should be doing. We know that it's healthy. We know that our body needs it. We know that we are sitting these days more than ever. We are more sedentary than ever. And it's impacting our health. It's impacting our longevity. It's impacting our day-to-day happiness. Most of us know that. Most of us are not surprised that we should be working out. And so a lot of you are doing that. A lot of you are taking your precious time and you are popping in a video at your home. You're making a priority to stop at the gym. You're signing up for Orange Theory Fitness. You're going out for a run. You're doing it. You're doing these things. And you're executing like you're supposed to be. You're doing the workout thing.  

Lifting weights requires proper execution 04:50 

You also know that lifting weights is really important. Strength training is really important for increasing your bone density, for putting on muscle mass, for again, improving longevity, improving ability to be able to function throughout life and be able to do the activities of daily living. There's so many benefits to building muscle and to lifting weights.  And yet what I see time and time again is that women get the message that it's important to lift weights, but then there's this breakdown between them understanding it's important and then knowing how to do it best. And so I totally get why people do this, where they say, okay, I should be lifting weights. Check. Got that.  

So they will scroll through Instagram and they'll find influencers and they'll bookmark workouts, right? Like an influencer posts, steal my glute workout. Cool. Bookmark. Or they'll go onto Pinterest. Do we still use Pinterest? I still use Pinterest. Does that make me old? I don't know. Maybe TikTok. Maybe TikTok is more like the young and way to like find workouts, right? You find a TikTok on a workout and you save it. Or you go on Pinterest because you're old like me and you search Pinterest and you find a workout and you save it.  

And so then what you do is you go to the gym and you show up and you're like, I don't know what I'm going to do the gym today. I need to lift some weights. So let me go find one of those workouts that I saved. And you find one of that, that glute workout and you execute it and you check in on the boxes because you feel the burn. It's hard. You're sweating. You feel sore the next day. And you're like, I did it. I did. I did the lifting thing. Check. Move on with the rest of my day. And then you go back to the gym a couple of days later and it's like, Oh gosh, I gotta figure out what I'm doing today. Go back. Okay. Here's an upper body workout. Let's do this. And so then you do that and you proceed to lift weights this way for, you know, weeks to months and you probably make some progress.  

Newbies gain muscle easily 06:45 

Listen, you can, when you're a newbie, when you're very first starting with working out and lifting weights, your body is just primed to put on muscle. You can literally do almost anything, almost any workout. And you can put on muscle mass. It doesn't have to actually be even that great of programming. Your body is just like, I need to put on muscle mass and it will literally respond to anything. So you probably will make some progress this way, but very quickly you will hit a roadblock where you will, you're still going to the gym. You're still doing the lifting thing and you won't see any changes. Your body won't be adapting. You aren't really getting stronger. You definitely aren't noticing any muscle mass being developed and you're doing the thing that people say that you're supposed to be doing. But the question is, are you wasting time? Are you actually getting a return on that investment? And a lot of times the answer is unfortunately no.  

Group fitness isn't muscle-specific  07:42 

And this doesn't just relate to workouts you find on Pinterest or Instagram or anything like that. This can also relate to group fitness classes that a lot of people go to. And listen, I am not here to bash on group fitness. I'm a big group fitness fan. I taught group fitness for eight years. I think it is a fantastic way for a lot of people to get a really great workout. I think it's a fantastic way for people to bridge, especially women to bridge from cardio into weightlifting because going into a body pump class and learning how to lift a barbell is much less intimidating. I think it's fantastic. I think there's a lot of great things about group fitness. I do not hate group fitness. I go to group fitness classes, okay? I just need to make that really clear.  

But most group fitness classes that you're going to, your Orange Theory Fitness, even CrossFit, I love CrossFit, I do CrossFit, even CrossFit has this problem where you're going in, there's dumbbells, there's even a barbell sometimes, and it can kind of lull you into this security of thinking, oh, I'm checking that box. I'm lifting weights. I'm building muscle because, you know, there's weights in this workout. 

Burning doesn't indicate muscle growth  08:46 

And we also have been taught and led to believe that there are some indications we should be looking for that help us to know if we're building muscle. And I'm just going to tell you ahead of time that these are all myths. All these things that I'm going to tell you are all myths. They don't actually indicate that muscle mass is being built, okay?  

So one thing that a lot of people kind of indicate that they think that muscle mass is being built is when you feel the burn. Like when your muscle starts to burn, people have been led to believe that, oh, that means I'm building muscle. It does not. It doesn't. It can, but it doesn't. It's not like every time you feel the muscle burn, that means that you're building muscle.  

A great example of this would be, do a wall sit. Go sit on, you know, do you know what a wall sit is? Like when you put your back up against a wall and you like bend your knees and you act like there's a chair under you, but there's no actual chair. Do a wall sit. It's an isometric exercise, meaning you're not lengthening or contracting the muscles. It's just a static hold and your legs will start to burn. They will start to burn very quickly. You are not building any muscle mass really with a static isometric wall sit. You may be building some muscle endurance, but you're not building any muscle mass. So just because it's burning doesn't mean that it's actually building muscle mass. 

Sweating doesn't signify muscle growth  10:07 

Another one is sweating. Like we feel if it like our heart rate gets up and we sweat a lot, then somehow that's translating into like me, you know, me building muscle. And I'm meaning this in the realm of like lifting weights, right? It's like if you had like a really sweaty weightlifting exercise or, and you know, it was really hard, then that must mean that you're building muscle. And again, that's not the case. Like sweating and having a heart, high heart rate doesn't necessarily indicate that you are building any muscle. It's an indication that your heart had to work harder, that your body had to cool itself down. It got hot and they need to cool itself down. It doesn't indicate muscle growth.  

Soreness doesn't indicate muscle growth 10:46 

And then the last one is soreness. So many people think, oh, if I'm sore the next day, then that definitely means that I built muscle mass. And that's not the case either. Soreness is an indication of novelty. It means you did something new that your body was unfamiliar with. And that's where soreness is generated from. You can go on a hike. And if you're not used to hiking, you can feel sore the next day. That doesn't mean you built an appreciable amount of muscle mass on your hike. And so muscle mass is much more closely tied to novelty than it is to actually muscle being grown or being built.  

A good example of this is when I was, I did power lifting for a couple of years and competed in some competitions. And you know, that was kind of like, that was a time. And during that period of time, I put on a lot of muscle. Like I look back at my photos and I had probably more muscle during my power lifting days than I've had at any other point in my time, including right now, I've actually lost muscle mass for my power lifting days. So I, I put on a lot of muscle mass. I put on a lot of strength during that time as you know, I was training as a power lifter and yet I was almost never sore. I was very, very, very, very rarely sore. And that is because I did not have very much novelty. I squat, squatted, I benched, I deadlift and I overhead pressed. And I did those four exercises like 90% of the time was what I was doing. It was one of those four exercises. So it wasn't very novel to my body. And I was only doing a little bit more weight than I was doing before a little bit more volume, but overall it wasn't super novel to my body. So I was not very, very sore.  

Now converse that with when I do CrossFit, which I do CrossFit now a couple of times a week and I am way more sore with CrossFit than I ever was power lifting. And again, if I compare the amount of muscle mass that I have on my body when I was doing CrossFit five days a week versus the amount of muscle mass I have on my body when I was doing power lifting, it's not even close. So I just, I'm just trying to hammer home this point that this idea that if you're sore, you're building muscle mass isn't, it's not a good indication. That's not a good indicator. 

Enjoy workouts, but prioritize muscle 13:00 

Now don't hate the messenger here. I'm not telling you to not do your beloved Orange Theory classes. I'm not telling you to not do your marathon training. I'm not telling you to not go to CrossFit or to do your swimming or whatever it is that you love to do. I am not telling you that at all. At the end of the day, the best workout is the one that you'll do consistently. And I stand firmly behind that.  

If you love and cherish and look forward to, and are very consistent with going to your Orange, I'm picking on Orange Theory Fitness. It's definitely not the only one, but if you love your Orange Theory Fitness classes and it gets you to the gym and it gets you working and exercising and moving your body, I love that for you. That's fantastic. I am not saying that you have to stop that. Okay. To be very clear.  

What I am saying is I don't want you fooling yourself and thinking that that is going to help you to build an appreciable amount of muscle because it's just not. It's not actually structured in a way that will ever help you to build an appreciable muscle. Now, is muscle the only thing? No. Is there value in cardio? Absolutely. Right. So I do want to like couch it in that terms. I can just like see the DMs now of like, you say that you hate all group fitness and I don't. Listen, I do CrossFit. I'm not building the maximum amount of muscle that I could build by doing CrossFit.  

In fact, recently I've been adding more bodybuilding style training. I bodybuild three days a week and then I do CrossFit two days a week and that's a combination that works for me. But I love CrossFit. Even though I know it is not optimal for building muscle, I like it. I like doing it. It's fun for me. It's something I can do with the community. But I do that and I make that decision knowing that it's not optimal for building muscle. I think that's the point that I really want to get to. It's like, I want you to know what optimal looks like so that then you can make an informed and educated and empowered decision of how you want to structure your workouts in a way that works for you.  

Understand muscle-building structures 15:07

If you learn and understand and know how to build muscle and you're like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that. I'd rather do this. I love that for you. What I don't want and the mistake that I see a lot of people making is they're just not even aware that they're making that mistake. And so they're going to these classes and they're lifting these weights and they're doing these one-off workouts and then they're frustrated because it's not working and they're not losing the fat and they're not gaining the muscle that they want to gain and they're lost and they don't know why not because they have this idea that it should be building muscle. So when you can understand the structure that needs to be in place to build muscle versus just working out, you can make an informed and educated decision about how you want to structure your workouts.  

Building muscle requires intentional programming 15:52 

Building muscle is not ever accidental. You're not going to accidentally build muscle. You have to force your body essentially into building muscle because as my friend Amy Williams said in last week's podcast episode, building muscle is expensive. It's biologically expensive for your body. Your body's not going to just do it willy nilly. It's only going to do it if it's forced to do it. And so building muscle requires a bigger picture mentality. It requires a longer term strategy and it requires intentionality in your programming. 

So doing one-off workouts, grabbing something from Instagram and showing up in the gym and just doing that workout isn't going to do that. It isn't going to create the stimulus that's needed in order to actually build muscle. Same thing with, again, workouts that change every single week. This is the rub with CrossFit is that you always have different workouts and there's no progression. It's always different. It's always one-off. And I get it that a lot of people love the idea of novelty, the idea of it's never the same. It kind of scratches that itch of I don't want to be bored with my workouts. If I had a dime for every time someone told me that, I was like, I don't want to be bored. I want it to be different and exciting and new. And then sometimes people think, oh, I'm randomness is actually like this idea that I don't even know. I haven't heard it as much on social media lately, but this idea of like muscle confusion as if like your muscle has a brain that it can be confused or not.  

So this idea of like muscle confusion is good. I don't know that, that would had this moment in like the spotlight. I haven't heard that as much anymore, but it's like, so should be asked. Like it's not actually a thing. Your muscles can't get confused and they can't get clarity either. Uh, you know, so if you're, your workouts are changing consistently and constantly, it's not building muscle. It's not building an appreciable on muscle. Again, if you're a newbie, literally you can like do anything and you'll build muscle for a period of time. Lucky, lucky dog you. But once you get past that newbie phase, which is, you know, like three to six, maybe 12 months, if you're like super duper lucky genetically. Uh, but after that point, your, your body is not going to build muscle unless you do it in a way that forces it to build muscle.  

Muscle mass is essential for aesthetics 18:12 

Okay. I just took a pause and I checked my Instagram DMS and it reminded me that I, I need to make this point as I'm having this conversation so that we're all on the same page. When I talk about building an appreciable amount of muscle, when I talk about maximizing muscle growth, I think sometimes in people's heads, they get this idea of like Hulk Hogan or like really super jacked women or like, I don't really actually want to build a lot of muscle, Amber. I just want to look lean. I want to look toned. I want to whatever word you substitute in there. And so you get in your mind that it's like, I don't actually need to be really worried about building muscle.  

Here's what I need you to understand. The body that you want for most women, like 95% of women who I talk to or I work with and they show me a picture of the body that they want. And they show me a picture of where they are now. 95% of women need to both lose fat. And most of them are very aware of that fact. They need to lose fat, but most of them are not aware that they need to put on muscle mass as well. To get the aesthetic you want, to get the look that you want, you need to put on an appreciable amount of muscle mass. And I think that's a missing piece for most women because we use words like toned. I want to look toned. Like, what does that mean? You can't actually tone a muscle. A muscle can get bigger and it can get smaller. That's it. A muscle can contract harder or softer. Like there's only certain things that muscle cells can do. They can't actually get toned. So when you're saying I want to look toned, you likely need to add muscle mass to your body and you likely need to reduce your body fat percentage. You need to reduce the amount of body fat that you have on top of that muscle. And that is what a toned look looks like. So I just want to, I only say that because I just answered a DM with someone who had that same idea of this. I just want to look toned. So do I actually need to put on muscle? And the answer is a big fat yes. Most of you are under muscled. Most of the population is under muscled from both a health standpoint and from an aesthetic standpoint.  

Muscles stabilize blood sugar  20:33 

I actually just had this conversation with my husband. We were talking about blood sugar control and how muscles are one of your biggest reservoirs and like sponges for glucose because your muscle contains glycogen. It stores glycogen. So glycogen is the storage form of glucose. And so our muscles are such big glycogen and glucose consumers. They just use a lot. They use a lot of glucose. That the more muscle mass you have, the more you're able to pull that glucose from your bloodstream and you're able to utilize that glucose in the muscles for energy, that it helps with blood sugar stabilization, right? You're someone who has a higher A1C, build more muscle. You have someone who struggles with blood sugar regulation, build more muscle because the more muscle mass you have, again, it's like almost like a sponge. It's like your muscles are going to pull glucose from the bloodstream and get it out into where it can be utilized for energy, especially for those like big muscle groups. Okay. So I kind of got off on a tangent. That's kind of what happens with these rants is I have an idea of what I'm going to talk about, but then I just hit record and I just start talking and things come out. 

Building muscle and cardio are essential  21:49 

Okay. So where were we? We were talking about everybody needs to build muscle. Most people, I shouldn't say everybody, most people need to build muscle mass. It, from your health standpoint and from an aesthetic standpoint, it's going to be one of the best things that you ever did. So we understand that building muscle mass takes intentionality and that you want your workouts to give you an ROI. And not only in terms of building muscle mass, but cardio is very important too. And I think here's my sense as to like what's happened in the realm of fitness. I see this a lot and it's anyway, I see this a lot where we have, there's like a continuum and there's like extremes. And we, we as humans tend to like extremes. We tend to like black and whites. We tend to like good and bad. It's just how our brain makes sense of the world. And so what I have seen with the fitness world is that in the like nineties and early two thousands, cardio was having its heyday. Everybody wanted to be skinny. Everybody just needed to do cardio. And that was that. And we almost swung like way far to the opposite side. And I feel like the last, you know, eight to 10 years, the messaging has been cardio is stupid. Don't be a cardio bunny. Nobody needs, cardio is hardio. Don't do cardio. Everybody just should be lifting weights and just lift more weights, lift more weights, lift heavy, lifting weights is going to save you. And I hope, I think we are swinging more back towards the middle ground between those, because the reality is, is they're both important. This idea that cardio is the end all be all, and you don't need to do any weight training is not really, not really true. 

But I also think this idea that you can just do all weights and not do any cardio training is also not true. And the research bears that out. And so the reality is, is that you need both. Imagine that nuance moderation, who would have thought? So you need both and you need a balance between both. So how do you figure that out? How do you know what balance you should have and how should, how do you know how much, you know, weight you should be lifting? How do you know how many weight lifting days you should have? How do you know that your workouts are actually doing what it is that you want them to do? Again, this isn't about their, like me telling you, this is the best workout. This is one that everybody should do. 

I just want you to be able to understand and know what you're getting into. So know that when I go to the gym and I do X, Y, and Z, here's my, what I expect it to do for me. And so many women just are not educated enough about working out, about lifting, about cardio to, to have that kind of knowledge and that kind of confidence that like every time I go to the gym, I can walk away from it saying, I know exactly what that did for me. I know exactly what results I'm expecting from that. And I feel really good about that. Again, how most women gauge that is by, did I sweat enough? Do I feel sore? Did it burn? And those are not good indications that it's doing what it is that you want it to do. Does that make sense? I hope that, I hope I'm coming across clearly. I hope I'm letting my, not letting my passion like make it so that I can't communicate clearly, but I think this is such a valuable, a valuable knowledge base that women in a lot of ways lack. And I want to close that gap. I want you to feel more confident that you go to the gym and you walk away and said, yep, I know exactly what that did because it was very intentional. It's moving me towards my goals. Here, here's my goals, whether it's to lose fat or to gain, no other way around, lose, yeah, lose fat and gain muscle. I know exactly what that workout did and it's helping me to achieve whatever goal that is. And I think a lot of women are missing that connection.  

Optimize workouts through informative class  25:37 

And that's why I have created a class to be able to go deeper into this, right? We're just kind of scratching the surface here with this podcast episode. But if this is something that you want to dive deeper into, I invite you to register for my class, how to optimize your workouts. You can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/workshop. And let me give you just like a little preview of what you're going to learn in this class, because it's, it's an hour long class that is packed with so much information that you're going to walk away just knowing so much more about how to optimize your workouts, how to make sure that they're actually doing what it is that you want it to do. You don't have time to waste. Let's make sure the 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour that you're spending in the gym is actually doing something for your body. So a little bit of a highlight as to what you're going to learn in this class. So I talk about five steps really to making sure that your workouts are optimized. Step number one, and I'm just going to like, just kind of highlight each of these. If you want more, you want to dive deeper into this topic, that's where you can go to the class bicepsafterbabies.com/workshop. 

Prioritize fat loss or muscle 26:39 

So the first thing that I'll talk about in class is that how you need to pick your priority. We need to pick whether you're focusing on fat loss or building muscle, because how you structure your workouts will be vastly different based off of those goals. And I kind of talk through in class how to pick which of the goals that you're going after, and then how that kind of bleeds into how you should be structuring and thinking about your workouts on a weekly basis. 

And then we'll talk about how do you then build your workouts around this priority, right? If you're looking to lose fat, how are you going build those workouts? If you're looking to build muscle, what do you need to be thinking about when you're building your workouts?  

And then we'll talk about how do we optimize your lifting specifically, and then we'll talk about how to optimize your cardio. Because again, there's this balance between the two. We need both. You need my friend, Doc Liss on Instagram, Alyssa Olenek, I had her on the podcast. She is a fan of saying that muscle, how does she say that? She says, you need to build muscle mass, and then you need to condition that muscle mass with cardio. So it's like, they're like both needed, right? We need to use resistance training, we need to build the muscle, but then we also need to condition that muscle with cardio. So we'll talk about optimizing cardio, talk about optimizing lifting, and then prioritizing recovery. Because this is a missing piece for a lot of people, is they don't understand how important recovery is, and how to make sure that you're recovering enough so that you're getting the adaptations that you desire.

So if you want more, obviously it was like a really quick run through. I'll spend an hour on those topics in class. You can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/workshop, and come join me at my how to optimize your workouts workshop.  

Stop wasting time and money 28:20 

If there's one hope that I have for you, it's that you will stop spinning your wheels, right? Like stop wasting time, stop wasting money. I see so many people spend so much money that they don't really realize the things that they're spending money on aren't actually helping them to reach their goals. So stop spending money, stop spending time, stop spinning your wheels, stop feeling stuck, when the reality is that your workouts aren't doing it for you. They're not doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing. And you're doing so good by prioritizing it, and putting it into your calendar, and making it happen. Now the next step is like, let's make sure that it's actually effective. Let's make sure it's actually doing the thing that you want it to do. 

And that's what I'm really good at, being able to help people to be able to do. So if you haven't signed up for the workshop, even if you're listening to this podcast like down the road, if you go to bicepsafterbabies.com/workshop, you'll be able to sign up for a recording of the workshop. So even if you're listening to this, you know, a year or two later, go to that URL, you'll still be able to hear the class. You deserve to see the results that you're working so hard for. And I want to help you get there. That is why I do what I do. All right. I'll see you in the class, bicepsafterbabies.com/workshop. And that wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything. 

Outro

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